Sunday, November 24, 2013

“If you are the King of the Jews, save
yourself.” The sign they tacked above his head while he hung on a cross
read:“This is the King of the Jews.”
The thief crucified next to him wanted Jesus to remember him when he came into
his kingdom. And yet, never once did Jesus refer to himself as a king. Not
here, not anywhere.

The
whole idea of Jesus being a king never came from him. It came from people who
lived in a world where the most powerful among them were kings. If you remember
the story of God’s people in the Old Testament, you may recall how God led them
out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land. And, along the way, God formed
them into a nation.

In
the beginning, God chose people like Moses to lead his people. We can read
about this period in the book of Judges. But almost from the get-go, God’s
people were whining that they wanted to have a king, like all the other
nations. God advised against it, telling them that would be a huge mistake. But
they wouldn’t stop whining, so finally God gave them a king. But no king ever
solved their problems. In many respects, kings only added to their problems.

Why
is it that people long for a king? It’s puzzling. I can understand what’s in it
for the king. But what’s in it for the people? Even in a democracy like ours,
we have this propensity to long for someone who fills the role of king for us.
We’re always looking for the next one to crown. As we remember the 50th
anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, I think back on those
days, and it seems like he came as close as any American could come to royalty.
People even refer to the time of his presidency as Camelot. And yet, now, 50
years later, we know a lot more about his presidency and we’re able to look at
it more objectively. To say that Kennedy was a flawed man is an understatement.
King-making is always dangerous. The basic problem with kings is the power we
give them. Is it possible to have a king without power?

If
you’re really a king, prove it, Jesus. Now’s your big chance. No king is going
to die on a cross if he can help it. Make your move, Jesus. Well, if a king is all
about power, Jesus proves that he is no king. And that’s the irony of the Christ
story. We call him a king. But his life was as far removed fromthe life of a king as a person can get. The
only way to recognize Jesus as a king is by flipping the definition of a king
on its head.

First,
there is the way that a king would typically deal with those who attack him. He
would retaliate. He would obliterate his enemies in a way that showed his
strength so that nobody else would dare make a move against him again. That’s
the way kings rule. Through fear and intimidation and brute force. But Jesus is
the one who taught his followers to turn the other cheek and pray for their
enemies; he is put to death by his enemies without a fight. Not only that, but,
here’s the kicker. He actually forgave the ones who put him there. They stood
there and mocked him, after nailing him to a cross, and instead of lashing out
at them, he forgave them.

And
then there were the religious leaders and the Roman soldiers, who challenged
him to save himself. We know that self preservation is the most basic human
response to any threatening situation.We respond to a threat by fighting back or running away (fight or
flight). And yet, Jesus does neither. How is that possible? He refuses to save
himself.

Now,
saving yourself isn’t only about protecting yourself from those who want to do
you bodily harm. So much of the interaction we have with other people is about
saving ourselves. We save ourselves whenever we want other people to like us.
We want to look good to them. We want to save face. And so we present ourselves
in ways that are often deceptive; we cover up the parts of ourselves that might
cause others to see us in an unfavorable light. We’re always trying to show how
we’re better than other people. We may blame someone else for our mistakes. Or
it becomes way too important for us to prove that we’re right and the other
person is wrong. It’s all a part of saving ourselves.

We
had a good discussion about this in my clergy Bible study last week. One of my
colleagues, Tim, recalled what had happened the week we met to go over the
texts for All Saints Sunday. That week, I had told them I had a great joke I
was going to use in my sermon and they asked to hear it. So, I shared it and
they all laughed. And then they got quiet… and I knew there was a problem. Finally,
Robin asked if there will be children in the congregation when I tell that
joke. And I realized that if I told that joke with children present, I’d be in
big trouble. So, I didn’t tell it. So last week, when we had a discussion about
saving ourselves, Tim recalled how they had saved me from telling that joke on
All Saints Sunday.
And I had to come back with, “Well, it was early in the week. I’m sure that by Sunday I would have figured it out on my own.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I knew they were going to call me on it, and they did. “Yes, save yourself, Nancy.” It was said in good humor, but ouch! That’s exactly what I had done. Rather than admit that I came really close to saying something stupid in a Sunday sermon, I had to save face and insist that I would have figured it out without their assistance. Yep. I just had to save myself.

How
is Jesus able to overcome the way we human beings seem to be hard-wired for
self-preservation? When he was dying on the cross, he could have at least turned
to the ones who put him there and told them off or cursed them as a way of
saving himself. But instead, he forgave them. Jesus died in a way that was consistent with his teaching.
Remember how he taught his followers that the if you work hard to save your
life, you’re going to end up losing it, and the only way to save your life is
by giving it up? So, he didn’t save himself, and in the process, he saved more than
himself.

And
then we get to the part with the thief on the cross and we can see another
example of how Jesus finished his life the way he had lived it. If you had a
continuum with a powerful king on one end and the most wretched of the earth on
the other end, it would have been enough if Jesus had simply been human and
hung out somewhere in the middle, which is pretty much where we are. That would
have been enough. But that’s not where he spent his life. He identified with
the lowest of the low right up until his death, crucified between two
criminals. He was never one to make comments from afar about how we should all
be nice to poor people and sinners and the untouchables. He became one of them.
He lived and died in a way that is about as far removed from the life of a king
that you can imagine, in solidarity with outcasts.

And
yet, the thief on the cross seemed to think that Jesus was about to come into
his kingdom. Did the thief see something that seemed to elude everyone else?
Did he understand that things going on that day at the place called The Skull
weren’t what they appeared to be?

Mocked, derided, hung on a cross to die between two thieves.
If you’re a king, prove it to us, the crowd jeered. “Father forgive them, they
don’t know what they’re doing,” he said. They thought he was failing the king
test miserably. But the thief who hung beside him seemed to know better. We
know better, too. We know he was showing the world what kind of a king he was.

No,
he is not like any king this earth has ever known before or since. In many
ways, he was more of an anti-king than a king. Because kings are supposed to be
powerful. And yet, the irony is that he had a power greater than any earthly
king has ever had. By emptying himself of all power and giving himself in love,
he showed us what true power looks like.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Yesterday was an ordinary extraordinary morning for me at
church. I say ordinary because it was a typical Sunday for Holy Trinity. And
ordinarily, a typical Sunday for us is extraordinary. For me, personally, it
happened to be my 61st birthday, and there was a sweet moment during
the announcements when that was celebrated. It was also a significant day for
me because it marked the 45th anniversary of the day water was
sprinkled on my forehead as a community of the faithful gathered for worship.

Now, if you do the math, you know that I was 16 years old
when I was baptized. I wasn’t raised in a church-going home, so
my religious formation was rather random.
When I was in junior high, my two best friends, Melody and Barb, went to the
Lutheran church and I tagged along. I showed up at confirmation classes with
them sporadically, yet it was enough for the pastors to go ahead and confirm
me. But then, there was the matter of my baptismal deficiency that had to be
dealt with first. So, I was quickly baptized
in order to be confirmed with the rest of the class. At the time, I was mostly
concerned about how the moisture on my forehead might have messed up my hair
for the pictures later. And yet, now that I look back on that moment and all
that’s followed, I know it was a complete game changer for my life. Because of
that moment, I have had a lot of ordinary extraordinary days like yesterday.

Our worship began with a baptism. A beautiful child named
Jackson was carried to the font by his parents, Mitch and Becki. I had been
forewarned that he panics when someone else takes him from his parents, so I
was as hands-off as possible. And he also wasn’t crazy about water, so it might
be a bit tricky. As his father leaned him over the font, Jackson had a
puzzled look on his face. I scooped some warm water into my hand and poured it
over his head. He looked completely startled, like he hadn’t yet realized
this might be something to cry about. And then I quickly scooped up another
handful and poured it on him. Now his look of surprise turned to fear and I
saw him look over at his mother. Her eyes were locked with his, telling him
that he was safe. But he wasn’t so sure. When the third installment of water
was administered, he was just about to cry, but his mother’s look of
reassurance saved the day. His frightened eyes met a look of love and
encouragement that said, It’s all right,
Jackson. I’m right here. Don’t be afraid. Mommy loves you. The parents who
brought him to the water were there to carry him through that moment and they
will continue to give him all the support he needs for his great adventure of
faith.

I thought about a story I heard that morning from
Miguel in our adult class. I had asked members of the class how often they read
the Bible. Their answers were all across the board with some reading the Bible
twice a day, others never reading it at all, and everything in-between. Miguel
told us that when he was growing up he watched his father reading his Bible
every morning after breakfast. He would randomly open it and read wherever it landed.
Now, I’ve heard of other people doing that, so it’s not that unusual.But then Miguel told us more. He said that he does the same thing now, every morning, just like
his father. And all his siblings do, too. When his father died, Miguel had the
honor of receiving his Bible, and now when he opens the Bible every morning
randomly finding God’s word for his day, he does it with the Bible of the one
who taught him this faith practice.

Later in the worship service, we received a group of new
members. I called them up to the chancel, where they stood before me in a
semi-circle. As I started to read the welcoming rite we use at
Holy Trinity, I noticed they were hanging onto one other. Some had an arm around the person beside them,
others were holding hands. It’s as if they were physically supporting one
another in love as they took this next step in their faith journey together. When I saw this, I lost it, and for a moment I
was afraid I couldn’t go on.

You see, this wasn’t a typical group of people joining the
church. They had all been a part of another
congregation. When their church closed, they were devastated. And yet, the Spirit
led them to worship with us at Holy Trinity. The first few weeks, they were so
happy to be together, despite all they had been through, that they huddled
together in the back pews like they might never see one another again. After worship they lingered on the front
lawn long after the rest of us had gone home. They were grieving and they
needed to be together; they needed to talk about the emotional trauma they had
endured. And then, over time, they came to see their struggle in a positive
light. They realized that God had brought them to a new church family.They learned to love a new congregation in a
denomination different from the one they had known for so long. And finally, it felt like they were home again. They stood before me on
Sunday morning, dear souls holding onto one another in love, one community of the faithful being transplanted
into a larger community of the faithful. It was a powerful moment that I will never
forget.

Now, in case you haven’t connected the dots of the thread running
through my Sunday morning, it’s community. If you could imagine pulling a plant up by the roots and expecting it
to grow without the soil to nourish it, that’s what it’s like for a person of
faith to survive outside community. At least, that’s the way I’ve experienced
it in my lifetime. I didn’t grow up the way Jackson will, or the way Miguel did, but somehow,
community has found me and guided me along the way.

I’m baffled by people who don’t get this.
Especially people who aspire to follow in the way of Jesus and yet see no value
in being part of a faith community. I wish they could spend an ordinary
extraordinary Sunday morning looking through my eyes at Holy Trinity Lutheran
Church. I can’t imagine how they could
do that and fail to see the amazing gift that God offers us in Christian community.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Not
all questions are alike. There are rhetorical questions where the answers are
so obvious, there’s no reason to respond to them. Then there are questions that
require a right or a wrong answer. And finally, there are those questions that really
have no answers.

A
good lawyer is trained never to ask a question to which he or she doesn’t already
know the answer. And a good educator is taught the exact opposite. When I was
learning how to be a teacher I was taught that the best questions to ask were
the ones for which I didn’t know the answer myself.

If
you want people to think, you invite them to use their imagination. When you
ask a question and you have no idea what the answer is, you open a
conversation. When you ask a question and you already know the answer, there is
no conversation. Taken to the extreme, questions
with definitive answers can easily evolve into gotcha questions.

A
gotcha question was what the Sadducees asked Jesus in Luke 20:27-40. Right
before this, they had asked him another gotcha question. That one had to do
with paying taxes to Caesar.And now
they hit him again, firing at him with both barrels. He had entered Jerusalem
and raised a ruckus among the people. He had to be stopped before things got
completely out of hand.

So,
they construct an absurd, hypothetical question to trap Jesus. The law of Moses
says that if a man dies and leaves a wife without children, the man’s brother
needs to marry his wife and raise up children for his brother who died. So,
just suppose there were seven brothers in a family. The first one marries and
dies, childless. So then the second one marries the same woman, and remains
childless. And then the third, and so on, all the way down the line. (Okay. Just
stop and think about that. What man in his right mind would marry this woman
after the third of fourth husband died? Heck with the law of Moses. That man
would have to be nuts.) Well, anyway, as the story goes, finally, after burying
seven husbands, the woman dies.

So,
here’s the big question: after marrying all seven men, which one will be her husband
after the resurrection? Oh, what a dilemma! How you gonna answer that one
Jesus?!

Luke
provides us with a little background to expose the hypocrisy of the question.
It’s asked by the Sadducees. And the thing about the Sadducees is that they
don’t believe in the resurrection. And yet, they’re asking Jesus a question
about what will happen at the resurrection.

The
question of what happens after we die has been out there forever. In the Old Testament, people’s understanding
of it evolved. The idea of the dead being resurrected came later, when it was
adopted by some believers, but not by others. The Sadducees basically followed the
earlier books of the scriptures, the Books of Moses, which didn’t support the newfangled
ideas about the resurrection of the dead that the Pharisees embraced. So, this
was a theological hot potato. It was a gotcha question. Jesus knew that. And
yet, he didn’t answer it like a gotcha question. He answered it as if he had
been invited into an open conversation.

First,
he said that marriage is something people do in this age, but when the
resurrection comes, marriage will become irrelevant. So much of what we believe
about the next life is based on what we know of this life. If our relationships
are important to us, we can’t imagine living without them. And, of course,
there are a lot of other things that we’re attached to in this life: music,
certain foods, our pets, our smart phones. How could we ever be happy without
the stuff we cherish the most? And yet, in Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees’
question, he’s saying that the stuff we think is so important in this life
isn’t going to matter a hill of beans in the next life. We can’t begin to
understand that because our only point of reference is this life. So, when we
imagine what heaven will be like for us, we picture it in ways we’ve already
experienced.

It’s
like a two-year old wondering if she will be able to take two pacifiers with
her when the time comes for her to go to college. She can’t imagine a world
without pacifiers, and college is so far removed from her experience that she
can’t begin to get her head around what that would mean for her.It may help her to picture going to college one
day with her pacifiers, but those of us who are older know beyond a doubt that
when the time comes, the question over pacifiers will have become completely
obsolete. That isn’t all that different
than the ways we think about life after death. We just can’t get our heads
around what we have never experienced.

Jesus
says more about the resurrected life as he talks about what really matters. He
says that, from our perspective, we make a distinction between life and death. We’re
either dead or we’re alive. But that’s not how God sees us. From God’s
perspective we’re all alive. We’re all alive because we’re in a relationship
with the God who loves us and that relationship never ends.

In
other words, Jesus tells his examiners, the things you’re worried about are
kinda silly, when you look at them from God’s perspective. Well, we’re still obsessed
with what happens to us when we die.And
why wouldn’t we be? It’s the great unknown that, one day, every one of us will come
to know.

Last
week we celebrated Dias de los Muertos and Halloween. And just look how popular
“Walking Dead” is and all the movies about zombies. And vampires. And all the
books about people who have had near death experiences and what they saw. We’re
fascinated by the dead because we want to know what they know. But, the thing
is, even the people who claimed that they died and came back to tell us what
they saw, even those people haven’t truly died. If they died, their brains
would stop working. And they would have nothing to tell us. The fact is, no
living person has ever died and come back to tell us what it was like. Well,
except Jesus. But, interestingly, when he came back from the dead, he really never
described what it was like for his friends. I suspect that’s because he couldn’t
have described it in a way they would ever understand.

They
were still like babies, wondering if they will be able to take two pacifiers or
one when they go to college. How could a two year old ever grasp what it would
be like to move away from home and live in a dorm and eat cafeteria food, and
go to classes, and study, and scrape together money for tuition, and drink too
much at a party, and fall in love, and worry about finding a job after they
graduate, and all the stuff people do in college. If you told them all that,
they would still be wondering about their pacifiers.

But
what we need to know about life after death Jesus has told us. We are God’s
children. We will always be God’s children. The love God has for us will never
end. God is the God of the living. In God we are always alive. God is there to
hear our borning cry. All along the way God is there. And when we finally close
our eyes for the last time… guess who’s there? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Sunday, November 3, 2013

About 20 years ago in the town where I was living in
Ohio, an amusing phenomenon was going on.
Everywhere you looked, someone had a concrete goose sitting on their front porch. They
were painted white, with an orange beak, and stood just about the size of a
real goose. Now, the fun part was that people couldn’t just let them stand
there naked. They dressed them. In fact there was a whole cottage industry of selling
outfits for concrete geese. I used to think they were the silliest things, and
often remarked about them to my parishioners. “Did you see the goose on the
corner dressed like a pink flamingo?” “How ‘bout that goose dressed like
Abraham Lincoln?” I thought it was a hoot.

Apparently, I had commented about them one too many
times, because the people in my church concluded that I must like them. So, they
surprised me and gave me one. It was wearing a blue and white gingham dress and
a yellow straw hat. Because it was given in love, I felt compelled to put my
new goose out in front my house. And of course, I had to dress it: like a
pumpkin, a turkey, Santa, a leprechaun, an Easter bunny. When my daughter
graduated from high school I bought a cap and gown for it to wear. In the
summer it had a little Cleveland Indians uniform.

Well, this went on for a couple of years and then I
got a call to serve at a church in North Carolina. I had no intention of
bringing the goose with me. But there was a problem. The people of my new
church and the ones from my old church got together and loaded the moving van
for me. They were just about to close the door to the van when one of them
shouted, “Oh, don’t forget the goose!” And on the truck it went. Oy!

So, I moved the goose to my new home in North
Carolina, where people knew nothing of concrete geese. It embarrassed me, and I never once dressed it.
It sat there naked on my porch for a couple of years until it was time for me
to move to my new condo and I wasn’t about to move that goose with me. But do you
have any idea how difficult it is to dispose of a concrete goose? I couldn’t
lift it, and I certainly couldn’t throw it in the trash can. But I had a plan.

Next to my house there was a little wooded lot. So I
dragged the goose into the trees and dug a deep hole. As I tipped the goose over, it dove head first into the earth. After I filled the hole in with dirt, I
noticed that a little bit of the tail, maybe an inch or two, was poking up
through the ground. I hadn’t dug deep enough. But that was it. I was done with
the goose, and I left it like that.

I often think about that little white goose tail
sticking up in the woods. I imagine someone tripping over it someday
and wondering, “What the heck is that?” And maybe they’ll dig it up. It might
be some archeologist years from now and she’ll wonder what one of those strange
concrete images they found in the area formerly known as Ohio, is doing here
500 miles to the south. For the fact is, even though I tried to get rid of that
darned goose, it’s still there. And now someone in the future will have to deal
with.

This Sunday we celebrated All Saints at worship. As a part of our liturgy, we
remember those who have died. But All Saints includes
more than those who have gone before us. It’s a great procession that includes
us. And it is a procession that continues; there are those who will come after
us, too. What will we be leaving behind us for them? Will they be stumbling
over the stuff we tried to cover up, but couldn’t? Will they be living on a
sustainable planet? Will they be cleaning up our mess? Will they be further
buried in the consumerism that consumes us? Will they try to solve the world’s
problems through violence because that’s the only way we’ve taught them? Will
they be fueled by hatred and fear? Or will they learn from us a better way, a
way of compassion and understanding?

For those who come after me, I really hope that I can leave behind more than a
concrete goose in the woods.

Friday, November 1, 2013

On this All Saints Day, I’m thinking
about my second call. It was a two-point parish with a town church and a rural church. The first time I went to that little country church, I
noticed that there was a cushion in one of the pews, but nobody sat in it.When I asked about it, I learned that the
cushion belonged to a man named John, who was homebound and couldn’t get to
church.I met John and saw him regularly
when I took Holy Communion to his home, but I never saw him in church.And yet, his place was still there; the cushion waited for him on the pew. After John died, I wondered what would
become of his cushion, since now we knew beyond a doubt
that he wouldn’t be coming back and he would never sit on that cushion again. Well, nobody touched it.For as long as I remained at that church,
John’s cushion remained in the pew.

What if every worshiper had a
place marker like that?And what if
we never removed them, even when the person died, so that we’d always be
reminded of their presence in worship?Some of us who have been a part of a
particular faith community for a while probably know exactly where their
cushions would be. And then, imagine seeing all of those who have worshiped in that space through the years at
the same time. That’s what the communion of saints is about.We’re connected to God’s people of every
time; there is a oneness we share with people we can no longer literally see. They’re very much with us.

Now, you don’t have to die to be a
saint. But as long as our pilgrimage on earth continues, we are saints who
carry a heavy load. We’re
people who have all kinds of limitations that keep us from being completely the
people God created us to be.We’re less
than whole as God’s saints. It’s like we’re
carrying this heavy weight on our backs.We’re never free of it.No matter
how much we grow in God’s grace, we can’t shake it.We’re always burdened by it.But when we leave this earth, that burden is
removed from us.We leave it behind. The sinner part of us dies; only
the saint part of us lives on. We finally become whole people, freed from our earthly limitations.

Just imagine how it would feel to carry
a heavy pack on your back for years and years and then to finally have it
removed.Imagine how freeing that would
feel.That’s what that phrase in the
hymn “For All the Saints” is talking about when it says, “We feebly struggle,
they in glory shine.”We’re all saints.But some of us are feebly struggling
saints, while others are gloriously shining
saints.All Saints Day is a time to give
thanks for the saints who once feebly struggled through life as we do, but now
in glory shine.Even if we never knew
them, they are the ones who have it made it possible for us to be here today.

There’s an old African parable that
tells about the process ants go through when they come to a small stream
and want to get across it. The first ant comes to the stream and steps out into the
water, only to be swept away downstream.And the next ant comes to the water’s edge and the same thing
happens.One by one the ants come, and
they are swept away by the water.But,
eventually, there are the bodies of dead ants accumulating on the water’s
edge.Until, finally, there are enough dead
ants that they span all the way across the water.Now, the ants that follow are able to cross
the stream of water by walking on the backs of those who have gone before
them.As the story goes, this is a
metaphor for the whole human race.

It’s a story that has stayed with me
over the years as I think about those whose backs I have walked upon in my
life. As a woman pastor I think about those who came before me who didn’t make
it to the other side of the stream, but provided a way for women like me: the women missionaries who came before
me, the women who first served as
presidents of the congregations, the
women who started the first women’s organizations.Way back when, this was a bone of contention
in many congregations and those women took a lot of grief because they wanted
to make their own unique contribution to the life of the church.I would not be a pastor in the church today,
were it not for the courageous ministry of those women.

As we get ready to head to the polls to
vote, I can’t help but think about the people whose backs I will walk across to
get into the voting booth: the colonists
who fought for freedom in our country and the women suffragettes who marched for the right to vote.

When I walk through the door to my
church on Sunday, I know that I will be walking on the backs of those who came
before us: the people of St. Mark’s Lutheran church who started our
congregation as a mission church; Pastor
William Lutz, the first pastor of Holy Trinity back in 1916 and all the pastors
who followed him; all who contributed
financially so that future generations would have a place to worship and do
ministry; those who struggled through times
of crisis and wouldn’t give up.They
weren’t just the ones who were here before us, they were the ones who have made
it possible for us to be here.No doubt,
many of them could not have imagined what our church might be like today, but
they provided the way for us to get here.

What about us? There will be others
coming after us, walking on our backs to get to the next place God is calling
them.Just as those who came before us have
left a legacy for us, someday we’ll be doing that for those who follow us. So,
we march on and take our place within the great procession of saints.

About Me

Nancy is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She serves at Ascension Lutheran Church in Towson, Maryland. Nancy grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, and then served time at Bowling Green State University, before moving on to Trinity Seminary in Columbus. Starting out in North Dakota, she then returned to Ohio and served churches there before landing in North Carolina, where she served at two different congregations in Charlotte. She was also on the bishop's staff and earned a PhD from Pitt during her spare time in the area of religion and education. She considers herself an educator who happens to be a pastor and it makes a difference in how she does ministry. She is a divorce survivor, and the mother of two artsy-fartsy children who abandoned her when they became adults. Now she shares a home with Father Guido Sarducci, her tuxedo cat.